3. You must use the whole word, but that whole word can be part of a larger word. The letters for the
prompt must appear in consecutive order. They cannot be backwards.

Thus: scram/scrambled is ok but scram/secret agent man is not.

4. Post the entry in the comment column of THIS blog post.

5. One entry per person. If you need a mulligan (a do-over) erase your entry and post again. It helps to work out your entry first, then post.

6. International entries are allowed.

7. Titles count as part of the word count (you don't need a title)

8. Do not tweet anything about your particular entry to me. Example: "Hope you like my entry about Felix Buttonweezer!" This is grounds for disqualification.

8a. Never ask for feedback from ME on your contest entry. There are no circumstances in which this is ok. (You can however discuss your entry with the commenters in the comment trail...just leave me out of it.)

9. It's ok to tweet about the contest generally.

Example: "I just entered the flash fiction contest on Janet's blog and I didn't even get a lousy t-shirt"

11. You agree that your contest entry can remain posted on the blog for the life of the blog. In other words, you can't later ask me to delete the entry and any comments about the entry at a later date.

12. The stories must be self-contained. That is: do not include links or footnotes to explain any part of the story. Those extras will not be considered part of the story.

84 comments:

Security had to bag a zealot last night. Tried to escape. Gr. A cell should be secure, dammit. Requesting reinforcements.Sincerely,CFO, R. Tiddlywinks

Get those hens in line. Scramble a few eggs if needed, so to speak. Not literally, of course. Fortify that compound, or I'll find some guards with more testicular fortitude. Fire anyone who is aloof or timid. For time is short. The big day approaches. Sent by,CEO, E. Bunny

I longed to be the scapegrace to his rapscallion. The glimmer in our gaze developed a heartbeat and that longing was finished.Time marched and Spring arrived gravid. That morning was a scramble. Turning on the river road revealed monstrous storms in chase. The flood roared a challenge to race.We had to slow to forti to make the bridge. The flood caught us and washed away the bridge with the car only halfway across.Stress had induced labor. My door was wrenched open but all I could do was pass the baby over before the water took me

Quill sharpened, he cut through scrambled prose with the focused precision of a moyel who works for tips, till the once snowy page, now lined by bands of black and spattered by crimson, evoked a hibernal landscape graced by ensanguined sastruga zebras. Not a single adverb survived. Still, at the finish, the night remained both dark and stormy.

Today. The vagrant gazed into the hotel’s elegant, glass-enclosed lobby. From the alley, he’d watched them finish the renovations—polish the object of his desire.

Today. He scrambled from his cardboard box, stumbling into a businessman at the hotel’s revolving door.

“Asshole!” The man thrust him aside.

He’d been called many names over the years—bum, the family scapegrace. And he’d accepted them all. But not today. Memories long-extinguished had been reborn. He staggered to the baby grand and coaxed the ivory keys to life. The exquisite melody peaked in a fortissimo swell; the crowd gaped.

It drew me like an arsonist to paraffin. Open second story window, flat truck roof below, distracted guard. How could anyone resist? I jumped, aiming for an escape. Graceful as a gazelle, but with the precision of an elephant. Missed the truck, landed on the warden. Which is why I’m in a small cell with bruises on my arms, crammed like a sardine between Rancid Ron and Knuckles the Emasculator.

Card baited with promises is greener than a grass. The road is paved with words, right words. And dreams about white picket fences. I smile. Bashfully. You sneer.“Time for food fortification.” There’s no salad bowl. Only a melting pot. It’s like shark finning. You dissect me to components. Slice my culture off, discard the rest of me, and blend. Blend till I become bland. Then, keep me like leftovers.I wait and gaze at you with hope.My gaze is parried with a glare.I’m not a scapegrace! Wait. Am I a scapegoat‽Too late to scram. Or scream.

Wednesday night. She’s cramming. If interrupted, she says, she might never reach the goal. He understands. As a future doctor’s spouse, he can be a time-thief or timesaver. But she has to eat. He brings her a chimichanga, zealous in his need to prove himself supportive.

A gentle knock. No answer. He knocks again. Frets. Faint from hunger? Asleep? He tries the door. Locked. Panicking, he locates the key he hid under the eaves.

Empty – her escape gracefully executed.

He sighs, glad he installed that tracker on her cell phone yesterday. She’d better be at the library. Or else.

His gaze swept over carnage: three crimson-slashed, one wreathed in foam. He’d arrived too late.

Growing up, comparisons were inevitable---and constant, with family, with neighbors. Despite their similarities, the late Golden Boy had been praised, a paragon of sophistication and devotion to family, while he’d been labeled the headstrong scapegrace, the rash ersatz rival with daddy issues. “Take the bodies and scram,” he said. “This isn’t the place.”

There it was! Truth be told, it was tacky, but his father would’ve been proud.

Fortissimama A. Capella, she a neon girl. She triangle-orange in a blue-circle world. She don’t want no dust-town life, never find a color in this old world. She scram. Saunter downcity, catch her some gaze.

Boys whistle. Boys catcall. She flip her hair and wink. They follow. They follow down the years. It be one year, it be two years, it be ten. One by one, blue-circle girls smile at them boys. One day, nobody follow. All them scapegrace boys, they turn into dust-town papas.

I open the box—ashes and dust—and unscramble its letter with rising mistrust.

Dear Christine Cosette Lyon,

I hate to tell you that someone is goneBut a promise was madeA promise I’ve keptTo the ashes insideThis task I acceptI pose you a riddle A last little noteBased on the talesSome maestros wroteWhy did the phantom’s cape grace the stage?What man carried Marius from the barricades?Who caused lions to gaze at the stars?Their finite tragedies are also yours.

Of all places to get marooned, Helsinki didn’t sit at what you’d call top of my list. Not that I was complaining. Still. Would’ve been nice if I spoke Finnish. And it was say, summer. Fortitude Emma. Fucking fortitude. I took a deep breath, gazed across the frozen bay. Moans of abandoned ships, cramped wooden bellies caught in the bite of Winter’s ice, the only sound. Trick me once…I gripped the flask as the djinn’s pooling darkness exited the stone archway. Scapegrace no more. Smiling, I crushed my fingers together.

Maggie slammed the button with the side of her fist and the SCRAM engaged, klaxon blaring. She’d always wondered if she’d have the fortitude. How many impossible tasks could one commit to in a lifetime?

Maggie picked up the disaster manual, paper despite the weight it added to launch costs, and ruffled her fingers over the edges. Notify Houston. Pray. No crying around the instruments. “Should we--” Drills had not been enough.

“Stop, not yet.” A deafening eternity of their paired breaths. Then Greg, the fucking scapegrace, grinned. “False alarm.”

Mr Gaze, Ms Scapegrace, Ms Scram, Mr Forti and Ms Fin walk into a bar. "Those are some pretty unusual names", remarks the bartender, preparing to meet their astonished gazes. "How do you know our names?", they completely fail to ask. "We know. We're trying to win a short story contest", is what they say instead. Fin shakes her head and gives Forti a disappointed look. "No more fourth wall breaking, you old scapegrace", she says while drawing an ancient scramaseax. He takes a fortifying sip from the whisky he hasn't ordered. "The end, my dear, justifies the names." Finis.

"Ya wanta hear a story?" the old seadog asked. "I'll tell ya a story. We was manderin' round the Galapagos, scoutin' for whale. Was carvin' a bit of scramshaw, killin' time, when all asudden, thar she blowed. The biggest forticating whale ya never saw. Come up on the larboard side, eyes agaze and burnin' like Beezelbub's. Rammed us so hard, that spermaceti forehead crushed the hull inta kindlin'. Nowise ta go but down afta that. Ship sunk faster'n cannon."

"How did you ever escape?" Grace asked.

The seadog grinned. "Grabbed aholt of his tailfin and rode him allaways to Nantucket."

Leonie finished scrambling her son’s eggs as he slept in upstairs. Pausing at the refrigerator, she gazed through smudged eyeglasses at his recent handiwork, held in place by a tattered feed store magnet. The widow’s eyes teared up.

Power of Attorney. Assisted Living. No longer considered independent, she was now a nuisance according to these unsigned papers.

But this wasn’t her first rodeo.

To escape gracefully, she’ll need to fortify her thoughts from her emotions. Just like at sorting time. When overgrown calves need shipping, their mamas don’t cry.

I gazed at my reality show team -- a chef, a clown, and a motivational consultant.

As a scapegrace, I appreciated how corporate chick’s slinky dress hugged her rack. Then she spoke and the fantasy scrambled like dropped eggs.

“We need to examine the roadblocks to crosswalking our key competencies into the appropriate wheelhouses. By leveraging commonalities, we can leapfrog the evolution without the hindrance of incrementalist paradigms.”

The chef broke up the fight. Later, fortified by his stew, we leapfrogged into the million dollar finals.

“I was here. Protesting. '77.”“You were a…hippie?” She eyes me with new interest.I haven’t bagged a girl like that since my fortieth.Her eyes narrow. “Typical boomer. Hypocrite.”“I—”“You brag about the Seabrook protests, but you keep the reactor online!”“Keep it safe!”“Right. ‘No Evacuation Possible’.” The signs are everywhere.She gazes at the terminal. Frowns. “What’s that?”I'm fuming, but it finally registers. An alarm sounds. “Scram the rods!” I scream.We run into the shelter; I slam the door.“Can we escape?” “Grace of God,” I mumble.I kiss her.Meltdown.

My mother was terrified Dad would die young. Her own scapegrace father left only a mystery behind, so she recorded every part of my babyhood. Dad's loving gaze, the bassinet he refinished by hand, the lullabies he so carefully memorized and scrambled anyway. We have boxes overflowing with tapes, notes, and photographs documenting how much he loves me for time immemorial.

Ironic, how often I've combed through those records looking for traces of her.

Grace, the gazelle, fled the scene. Better she'd not left the house that morning. Usual breakfast: Scrambled eggs, mug of wine. She drank hard; usually no problem.

For Tim O'Leary, things weren't looking much better; the midday sun broiling his bloodied carcass. He'd checked Grace's ear-tag, making sure her vaccines were current. Sick of being treated like some wild animal, she shot him in a drunken stupor.

"Escape, Grace!" she thought. But where to?

Finland! Nobody would look for a fugitive gazelle in a place that prides itself on Lohikeitto and curly-tipped shoes.

Dr. Halsey closed his front door. He was exhausted. It had been a long day, and a longer experiment. For twenty years, the simians had slaved away in the basement of Grace Medical Center. Some called it cruel, but Halsey dismissed them. What was more clinical than 100 monkeys typing until they produced a manuscript?

Scapegrace raised his eyes to look upon the scrambled resemblance of a man and felt not horror but pity. Fortifications of fat rolled over the bloated creature who once declared he ruled by the divine right of kings. Here sat a monster.

Such conceit, thought Scapegrace. Did he not know God spoke to him too? Had answered his prayers and guided his hand to the knife hidden beneath his robe, instructed him to finish this abomination?

“Scram!” she yelled, but the talons grabbed the seascape Grace had spent all morning painting. “What the? What does an eagle want with a painting?” But the bird slowly vanished into the cloudless sky, surfing on the trade winds. She packed up her art tools in the gazebo and took comfort in admitting the image sucked. Practice, ragamuffin. And patience. You don’t need to scramble. Stargaze, paint, work, relax, with fortitude you can escape gracefully from that bucket list.

The world watched her escape. Gracefully slipping her pale skin from his fiery grasp. By nightfall she'd rise. No longer willing to scram. Finally she'd stand bold and let his gaze strike her face, full and bright. Time was all that kept them chasing. For time was all that kept them apart.

Scrambled eggs with bacon and pancakes were served in the gazebo. My fortieth birthday, I just wanted to escape gracefully from this day. Four decades and nothing to show for it, infinitely unbearable. No career, no children, no husband. Although, I once had a man.

Vacationing, I was humiliated watching him ogle bikini-clad girls, then kiss one. His excuse of alcohol indulgence, lame. Underwater on our diving expedition, I swiftly slashed his arm with a knife. Sharks have an insatiable hunger. Eating machines ripping flesh and limbs as they devour their prey. The sharks were fulfilled. And so was I.

"That's the scotch? Let's cram a quick swig. She won't notice it's open. We can fortify our hope! Maybe it'll be us someday."

"Us? See-"

"Well, you're too much of a scapegrace. If you buckle down, maybe in ten years, but I'm ready now. I'm just closer to finishing this race and you gotta narrow your gaze, laser like, you know? Ugh, what kind of scotch is this?"

Iris hiked with her husband and two fine boys on her fortieth birthday. While belting out “The Happy Wanderer,” she collapsed into a patch of nettles alongside the trail and never woke up. The autopsy revealed a previously undiagnosed heart condition.

Rick hikes Cape Grace every year on her birthday. It hurts, but it hurts more not to. Today he gazes across the Columbia River Gorge and squints at the brilliance of the sun on the water. He thought he would jump. But the light is so beautiful. When he slips at the edge, he scrambles for a foothold.

A scrambling of memories clawed at the beggar with all life denied him. Here at the gates at the end of night, the beggar found the thief who had been crucified next to him.

“I meant to escape gracefully, but every life owes a death.” The thief sought absolution of something unseen. The humble wood gate opened. “Beggar, come with me.”

“He said it was finished,” the beggar said. He gazed upon peaceful green fields and saw emptiness. He expected fortifications of gold. Lust for glittering riches and revenge filled him, and he turned his back on morning’s first light.

I showed him my heartsick gaze, vowed to abandon my scapegrace ways. From beneath demure faux lashes I promised to scram when he wants space, never Forti the truth, never answer a fin “nothing” when a great white “something” lurks.

So he married me.

Now he follows me everywhere. Every week-a-versary’s another (suffocating) bouquet of roses, every meal’s a (tacky) candlelit banquet, every email’s a (clichéd) Petrarchan sonnet, and even simple grocery lists are now obscured by swarms of his (immature) x’s and o’s.

FortissimoMy body weeps because my heart cannot. It pulses euphoric. My shoulders grow lighter with each kilometer. On the 10th, I leave behind my addictions of caution and loneliness. (Unlock closed spaces, grasp helping hands). On the 20th, I hear my fears laugh behind my back. I ignore their chants of compliance and contempt. I want to scramble through the 30th, leave behind my immature scapegrace of a father; his disappointment, apathy. (Forgiveness is hard). The 40th is easier as I shed my past. (Breathe, breathe again). I gaze, beyond the last two kilometers. Dawn has finally arrived.

Sir's 'cape' graces the corridors. Initially, he'd tried to correct them: 'Gown not cape!'But their actions only grew crueller as they made him their subject to torment.

Tonight, Sir's 'cape' is a black, billowing sail gliding past classrooms, turning bat to ascend the stone stairway. The boys, in their sleeping quarters, lie wakeful, little comfort in numbers; the haunted always alone. It finds the seam in their bedchamber door, pours itself through.Not one boy able to avert his inner gaze from Sir's scrambled limbs when it leaves by the window to form a pall on the ground below.

Like a sailor adrift, I gaze at my past for a break in the horizon. I search for the islands, not for the fins which devoured my dreams. From scapegrace to elder, memories bubble up and scramble for space on the surface of my personal sea.

Even with intermittent storms, my journey has been relatively calm and joyous overall. Therefore I stand firm against the wind, sure in the face of storms and thankful for the weatherman’s truth. Truth?Do I have confidence in forecasting?

As my life raft drifts toward the shoals, I look ahead and wait with fortitude.

FIN appeared on the screen. It starred the Italian heartthrob, Stefano Forti, and his ingénue. Julie Weathers, dressed in a sleeveless cape, graceful, doe-eyed, as any naive lass could be at 15. The story was, his fourth wife, Melanie Sue Bowles, introduced them when she caught the long gaze her third husband was giving Julie across the crowded room. He could scram for all Melanie cared, she was having a fling with the new director, Lennon Faris. His wife, Megan V was filming it all, not for Sundance, for divorce court. Her attorney told her, no words — show, don't tell.

We escape the perpetual growl of the tarmac and enter the terminal. A crowd is gathered on the far side, its scapegraces weaving impatiently around the rope barrier.

Eager to be reunited with my master, my feet scramble a bit on the tile floor. My mistress locates our overstuffed suitcase and wheels it toward customs. The three of us pass through without question. We hail a taxi.

At our final destination, she pulls the suitcase behind the gazebo and grabs a shovel. With a quick pat and a comforting smile, she begins to dig.

Trouble walked through my door in the shape of a redhead with getaway stems all the way up. “You a P.I.?”“Since the forties.” “It’s my husband. He’s messing around.”“Spendin’ time in a flophouse or a skirt on the side?”The dame flashed a rock the size of Gibraltar as she undid her dress’ cape. “Grace… but she’s not the problem. It’s her husband.”I shoulda told her to scram but a broad like that would make the Pope forget his vows.“He wants to finish off my Charlie.”Her gaze was all business as she pointed the gun.

One murder. Three suspects. Zero alibis. And me.They were all there when the stubby bastard died.The tall one, scarred, met my gaze with indifference. The other, nondescript except the obnoxious gold collar, avoided eye contact at all costs. And the slender fellow, a scapegrace in need of a trim, grinned. Discomforting. “Wasn’t me,” they each said.“Anyway, who put you in charge?” the Tall One asked.Not my first rodeo, friends.Apply some pressure; they scrambled, broke like fingers.“Middle did it,” the small one finally squeaked.“I’ll kill you!” Middle cried.Thus solved the Murder of Thumb.

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I'm a literary agent in NYC. I specialize in crime fiction and narrative non-fiction (history and biography.) I'll be glad to receive a query letter from you; guidelines to help you decide if I'm looking for what you write are below.
There are several posts labelled "query pitfalls" and "annoy me" that may help you avoid some common mistakes when querying.